“Lovely Bones”
2 out of 5 stars
Stars:ÊSaoirse Ronan, Stanley Tucci, Mark Wahlberg, Susan Sarandon
Director: Peter Jackson
Rated PG-13 for mature thematic material involving disturbing violent content and images, and some language.
Running time: 136 minutes
There’s no “Bones” about it. The movie based on the harrowing Alice Sebold best-seller fails to fully engage from both of its narrative components. It lacks the graphic power of a gritty crime thriller and the transporting metaphysics of an afterlife fantasy.
Though there are numerous changes from the novel that may bother its devotees, this adaptation of “The Lovely Bones” does offer two noteworthy acting performances.
Young Saoirse Ronan, so formidable as the jealous little sister in “Atonement,” excels as the movie’s key character. Enhanced by this actress’ mesmerizing screen presence and emotional range, her rape and murder victim Susie Salmon spends part of the proceedings as an innocent 14-year-old in a “normal” 1970s American family and the rest as a ghost trying to commune with her grieving family from a supernatural purgatory.
Unfortunately, this overdone, surreal, brightly colored hereafter is just absurdly hokey. It seems to exist as an excuse for director-producer-co-writer Peter Jackson to experiment further with the special effects technologies he used in his “Lord of the Rings” trilogy. (And its panoramas look like a rip-off of the horrible 1998 Robin Williams picture “What Dreams May Come.”)
These ethereal bits of Suzie wandering disoriented around a weird hell/heaven and trying to help the living identify her killer — they also only distract from the main story happening back on Earth.
The pain of her death slowly fractures the family. Mom (Rachel Weisz) basically checks out while father Jack (a miscast Mark Wahlberg) and sister Lindsey (Rose McIver) become separately obsessed with tracking down the criminal. Susan Sarandon is awful — overplaying for off-putting comic relief her small role as the eccentric grandmother.
Many plot turns don’t make sense: Why Suzie would go with her killer in the first place, why her sister doesn’t tell anyone before she puts herself in harm’s way to get evidence on the killer, why they don’t immediately guess that neighbor George Harvey is the killer. In his nerdy grooming, loner lifestyle, suspicious mannerisms and proximity to the victim and the crime, he couldn’t be a more stereotypical pedophile.
It’s a tribute to the great actor Stanley Tucci — in the movie’s second strong performance — that he makes the villain George so believably, terrifyingly creepy anyway. And he communicates evil even though director Jackson makes the unusual choice to only imply, but not actually show, what George does to Susie.
